It’s been a while, hasn’t it? True to form, May has kicked my ass on every level imaginable once again this year. How is it Memorial Day weekend already? I’m still not done getting the gardens in, the only batch of strawberry jam I made was at last night’s Happy Cook class and when people ask what our summer plans are, I have no answer. None. Continue reading
Category: canning
The front yard in a jar.
Easter Sunday evening, Kitchen Intern & husband had popped by for a drink. Sitting under the gloriously blooming pink dogwood, they couldn’t help but notice our yard was a carpet of violets in bloom. They inquired if I was going to do anything with them – like make violet jelly. The idea had not occurred to me, but later in the week, Pat mentioned he needed to mow soon, so if I was going to pick those violets, I needed to get on it. Continue reading
Food in Charlottesville Jars.
If you’ve ever taken any of my canning classes, talked to me for more than say, two minutes about canning or read anything I’ve written in the past few years about canning, then you might have picked up that I’m a bit of a fan of Food in Jars. I completely and totally credit the end of my years long struggle of making a decent batch of jam to Marisa McClellan, the woman behind both the blog and the cookbook. She introduced me to the concept of small batches – which also happens to be the subject of her latest cookbook, “Preserving by the Pint:Quick Seasonal Canning for Small Spaces“. She was here in Charlottesville last night at The Happy Cook, where she demoed Honey-Sweetened Strawberry Jam, on the first stop of her southern book tour promoting her new cookbook.
Canning Confessions.
This is not what you want to see when you grab a jar of tomatoes off your shelves.
That Apple Pie Jam I keep babbling about.
My friend Wynn shared this recipe for Rum Raisin Apple Pie Jam with me somewhere around my second bushel of apples this fall. It looked interesting, so I gave it a whirl. I followed the recipe to a T, with the exception of the sugar. 9 cups of sugar to 6 cups of apples? That made my teeth hurt just reading it. I cut the sugar back to 2 cups and used some of the excellent dark rum Peter brought Pat from Guatemala. Continue reading
Round tuit.
I finally got around to trying some things that had long been on my want-to-do list – wine herb jelly and canning my fermented mini-gerkins. I read in Joy of Pickling about hot water bath canning your fermented pickles and realized in the name of fridge space, I needed to do that before my fridge was overrun with jars of cute, mini-watermelon-like cukes. Continue reading
Tumbleweeds…
I didn’t mean to take a week break from blogging. I’ve been busy puttering about the homestead, but nothing I was up to seemed to make an interesting enough post on its own. So here’s a dump of some of what I did last week. Continue reading
Watermelon rind pickles and sandboxes.
Every summer I make a batch of watermelon rind pickles. I know there are some of you out there who think peaches are quite a bit of work – yes, they can behave like assholes as Patience so eloquently put it, but honestly, watermelon rind pickles are a far more pain in my ass than those peaches. Continue reading
Weekend Tomatoes
I got two great big beautiful boxes of tomatoes this weekend from my tomato guy.
In which I get a bushel of peaches.
A few of you who sat in my early canning classes this season were so knocked out by the sample of my pickled peaches that you had to go home, make them and blog about it. Which I think is actually way cool, but everyone along the way has mentioned how much work peaches are.
Chicken Wire & Paper Flowers 